Aftermath
by Stubborn Creativity
Summary: Post-season 1. Jane faces her mistakes through conversations with her ex-team. She's more alone and confused than ever. She's desperately trying to hold on to the words said to her by one man in particular, before this whole mess changed them all, but he's the one she hurt the most with her betrayal. One-shot.


' _You are Taylor Shaw.'_

Other people had asked her things, of course, but she had spaced out as she sank deeper into herself… whoever she was. These people knew nothing about her, which was fitting, because she didn't either. She's more lost now than when she climbed out that bag in Times Square. On top of her original confusion, now there's added hurt and a suffocating amount of guilt.

It doesn't matter who she talks to, they still keep her hands chained to the desk. She doesn't want to go anywhere anyway. After she saw Kurt, saw his face, was _arrested_ by him, all the fight left her. With anyone else, she would have fought all day, but he was her blind spot. She just wanted him to understand but he hadn't seen her since. She asked for him at first, but was studiously ignored.

All she can do now is try and explain to someone she cares about, when they finally send a familiar face. They want to know about all of it: all the lies, Taylor Shaw, Oscar...

'He called me Taylor.'

They still have no sympathy, and she doesn't blame them, but it hurts to face the truth. It's fitting that Dr. Borden is the first of the familiar faces. If only she could go back to when this all began, make the right choices and stand by the people she cared about. But she can't, and this time it feels real, and more hopeless than ever.

'I asked him if I was Taylor Shaw and he said yes. He always called me Taylor. I thought I knew who I was.'

'But you are not Taylor Shaw?'

'No... I don't know who I am.'

'And how long have you known this?'

'Around the same time Kurt... found out. I didn't know. I didn't question it for one second, after the DNA test.'

'But you've been hiding things from us.'

'Yes.' It's a rough admission, of voice and of heart. '...I never meant to hurt anyone, especially any of you.'

'Did you kill Director Mayfair?'

'No.' The accusation stings and her response is immediate.

Mayfair had accepted her, armed her and let her be a part of this team. Mayfair trusted her because the team trusted her… Who was more at fault? And why did they all seem to lose either way? Their whole team was broken; dead, chained or betrayed.

'You do know that anything you say will be hard to believe?'

These sessions weren't confidential this time around. This was an interrogation. The trust had gone. There would be no advice, no wise or caring words as she fell apart… the decline in her mental state was slow at first, denial and hope kept her holding onto to the ledge of the sanity cliff.

' _Please let me talk to Kurt,'_ she had begged. He wouldn't see her.

Finally her resolve slipped, and her panic snowballed, hitting every guilty sharp point and sad outcrop on her way down to mental rock bottom. Now they were piling her faults on top, burying her in her mistakes.

Bethany Mayfair… the woman who had protected her from Carter, and likely other dangers, had stood up for her…

'I watched her get shot. I tried to stop the bleeding. My hands were covered with her blood.' She looks down at her hands and she can still imagine the blood oozing through her fingers as the shock and horror of what had happened consumed her. 'She said she wouldn't let me hurt her team. She tried to shoot me as I tried to save her. I...' She can't stop the tears then. This is all her fault.

'What did Director Mayfair tell you?'

She shakes her head. She doesn't want to talk about it. It's too much. She's been juggling heavy secrets for too long and now they have finally come crashing down all around her, dragging her into the dirt.

'What did she tell you?'

No sympathy. No forgiveness.

'That she took me in. That you all took me in and... and that she wished she could have seen the look on his face...'

'...Agent Weller's?'

She nods. She keeps her head lowered. 'She wouldn't have wanted to see it.'

The guilt Kurt had over Taylor's disappearance… She had seen it frequently. She told him it wasn't his fault – and after his whole life he could finally believe it. Her coming back taught him to never give up hope. Then she retracted that hope, stomped on his relief and broke his heart. He'd already been living with heartbreaking mystery for 25 years, and he finally thought it was resolved. He probably wished he never met her, so that his hope couldn't be taken away from him again.

And then she's crying too much to be of use, so she's left to wallow in her hate and theirs.

* * *

It's still Kurt's voice that comes to mind when she tries to calm down, and it's a double-edged sword digging into her heart.

 _'I'm here. I'm here with you. You're okay. Keep breathing, Jane. You're okay.'_

It's not long before Dr. Borden is back. They still need answers: that's all they want from her. Her team obviously can't bear to face her.

'Who killed Director Mayfair?'

'Oscar.'

'Is this him?'

The picture shown to her is of Oscar in Tom Carter's car. Oscar had been planning this, manipulating her before she even saw him again. She had been a fool to trust him, but there had been such a sweet relief knowing he knew and loved her, and she was too curious to do anything but continue going back to ask more questions. Even when she was betraying her friends, what she was gaining seemed to far outweigh the trivial tasks Oscar was asking of her.

Now she had to do everything in her power to make up for that.

'Yes. That's him.'

'And where is this man now?'

'Dead. I killed him.'

'Why?'

' _He was going to dissolve Mayfair's body in lye_ ,' she says. 'But he tased me. Then he started telling me the truth. He was going to inject me again. Wipe my memory again. Because I was getting flashes. Because I wasn't as compliant as he wanted. I didn't mean to kill him but the barn caught fire and we were fighting and I grabbed a scythe and...' and then her words were reduced to a whisper, 'I was going to bring him in. For the FBI. For Mayfair. For all of it.'

'Has his death upset you, Jane?'

Jane Doe. Jane Doe. Jane Doe.

'I killed him. I got so many people killed.'

'But this was more personal than another dead body?'

As personal as it could be. She had very few friends. She knew so few people. Even with her colleagues, she had been _lonely_ , and overwhelmed by what was needed when she was around them. Oscar was the closest thing to a life she chose.

'He was my fiancé before all of this. I _remembered_ that. He loved me. He was my handler. He kept telling me all these things about me. About the real me. My favourite tea. Music I liked. What I used to be like. How I hadn't changed. He was so sincere. But he also said I was Taylor Shaw. So now I can't even trust that... but he did know the truth.'

She closes her eyes, thinks back to the beginning.

' _We have a theory. About who you might be... My next door neighbour... Her name was Taylor Shaw... You have the same eyes... Do you trust me, Jane? I've been looking for you my whole life.'_

She wholeheartedly trusted Kurt, even if he would never trust her again.

Dr. Borden brings her back to the real world. 'Oscar had a tattoo of a tree on his wrist.'

She opens her eyes once more. 'Yes...'

Her own tattoos had been helping them catch the bad guys. She thought she was the good guy. She still wanted to be.

'The man in the sex dream. We assumed it was Agent Weller. But it was Oscar.'

'Yes.'

'Did a sexual relationship continue between you?'

'Not at first. I didn't trust him. I wouldn't go near him. I attacked him, even after he saved me.'

'But you did enter into a sexual relationship with him?'

'A couple of times. After he won my trust. After he nearly died to save me... I thought the only one who truly knew me was dead, and then he wasn't.'

She doesn't get an answer to that. It's been killing her... being alone with the silence, but this is far worse... silence, and looking into an ex-friend's eyes, even if he was just her psychiatrist, this hurt her far more.

'...How did you track him?'

'I...' And for the first time she hesitates. 'I had a number I could call...'

'Why lie, Jane?'

'To protect my friends.'

'Us? Or them?'

'Neither. I called in a favour from someone who had nothing to do with this. I tracked Oscar. I didn't get anyone else involved. This is all me.'

She wouldn't drag anyone else down with her; she wouldn't hurt any more innocent people.

'You have to realise that this is a lot to take in. It obviously wasn't all you.'

She's desperate to take all the blame. She just wants to fix everything. She wants to make it all right.

She's absolute and steely-gazed as she says, 'I made it happen. It's all my fault. Where do you send me now?'

The waiting hurt. She still hadn't been sent away forever, and tiny jolts of hope kept pinpricking her heart whenever the door to her room was opened. Every time it closed a little more of her sanity leaked out her chest.

'We still have many questions unanswered.'

Yet the professionalism stung more; Dr. Borden had always been professional, this was his job, but he used to give her advice, she could tell he cared. Now, he just wanted answers to questions. He could join the club – who didn't have a million unanswered questions? All she had was curious confusion.

'...So do I.'

* * *

Reade had spoken against her, shared his concerns multiple times, and Kurt always stood up for her _(he thought he was protecting Taylor)_.

Zapata had appeared to like her, occasionally anyway.

There is anger in both of their eyes when they visit her. But there's also pity. It makes it worse.

'We knew something was up. Mayfair did too.' Reade had always been openly cautious about her – and he was right to be. Apparently Tasha always thought so too.

She stares at the table. Even if they always had doubts, they hadn't called her out. Not publicly anyway. They continued to trust her as a teammate and a friend. She betrayed that trust. She wants to convince them that she's sorry and that she wanted to fix her mistakes.

'I'm sorry.'

They ignore her apology.

'What happened to Tom Carter?'

'We had just come from the bar. I had slipped my detail to go and see...' she trails off but they know how it ends.

'Kurt,' they say in unison.

She nods. 'And then I started to walk home. But before I get there someone attacked me. I fought back but got knocked out...

'The next thing I know, I'm in a basement. It's just me and Carter. He starts to question me and he asks me who I am, and I don't even know that – I really know nothing – but he keeps asking me. Who I am. Where I got my tattoos. Who sent me. About Orion. I don't know. But he keeps asking.'

They don't react. Not that she's in any state to read their expressions. She's so frazzled, she's not been controlling her own.

Reade eventually frowns. 'He asks you. How?'

'Waterboarding.'

'Jesus,' Tasha says, 'and you still didn't think it was a good idea to confide in us after all this?'

'I wasn't going to make it out alive. He was going to send me away. Where no one would ever find me. And then someone shot him. Oscar saved me.'

'The fiancé,' Reade says bluntly.

'He knew me. He had a video of me on his phone saying I had to trust him. That this was all my idea. I couldn't tell anyone. He knew who I was. He was going to tell me who I was.'

'And Carter?'

'Oscar got rid of the body.'

'And used it to frame Mayfair.'

'He kept giving me these trust exercises. Little things. Replace Mayfair's pen. I checked it. It was a normal pen. An exact replica... It all seemed so harmless at first.'

'Like helping them get past the firewall? That's harmless?'

'I had threatened to stop helping them long before that. But they threatened Kurt. They said they'd kill him.'

'You did kill him. Just not physically.'

Reade doesn't look proud for having been proved right about her – _she hurt his best friend._

' _We're in this together,'_ Kurt had told her. Now she was alone, against them.

'I didn't mean to.'

'You seemed pretty compliant to my ears.'

'I'm sorry,' she says to him before she looks at Tasha and repeats, ' _I'm sorry._ '

She could say it a thousand times. She would, if they stayed long enough to hear it.

Tasha adds, 'Mayfair really cared about us. She was a good person. She helped you.'

'I tried to save her.'

She can't look at them as they leave.

* * *

Patterson sits opposites her, places her favourite tea (according to Oscar) on the table.

'Hey.'

She's used to it by now. 'How can I help?'

'I'm not here to question you. You've been through a lot, Jane. I'm just here to talk.'

'You shouldn't forgive me.'

'I didn't say I did...'

They meet eyes.

Patterson had always been the most friendly towards her, no matter what. Patterson had comforted her at the start; said the team would find a new shape… The blonde wasn't out there in the field, but she was the first to accept Jane Doe into the team.

'You're too good a person. Too good to know me.'

'We are friends. I imaged every tattoo on your body, when they were still brand new. I tested your DNA. I was the first to get to know you, like that. That doesn't go away, Jane.''

'I got Mayfair killed. I got Carter killed. I got David killed.'

Her eyes go big. 'You know more about David's death?'

She knows she shouldn't have brought it up, and she regrets it instantly.

'No. But my tattoos got him killed. I'm sorry.'

From the moment she turned up, people had started dying. From Markos to Mayfair and so many in between, all because of her.

Patterson's voice softens even further. 'I know you are. We know you are.'

'...Have the tattoos found anything else?'

'The whole project's kind of been put on hold.'

She was finally being treated like a human being who makes mistakes. She was finally getting answers, even if they were going to hurt her...

'...Is Kurt OK?'

Before all this, Kurt had wanted to make sure she was OK constantly. Now she knew that feeling very well. He was her starting point. She told him so. The man who wanted to protect her. There was a lot of baggage between them. But that made him invested. That made him the right man for the job. It was much easier to manipulate your friends. That manipulation ladened you with guilt.

Patterson looks to the window, the one-way glass, and Jane does too. Is he watching right now? Has he been this whole time? Surely not. She tries to say sorry with her eyes anyway.

'He wouldn't want me speaking for him.'

She looks back. 'I really thought I was Taylor Shaw. I was so happy to be her. It should be the other way around. I should be dead and she should be–'

'Jane. You were drugged. Your memory was wiped. Your whole body was tattooed. You were sent here. We poked and prodded you and used you like a treasure map. You were kidnapped. You were tortured. You were manipulated and threatened and your identity was dangled in front of you like a carrot. You were lied to. You had to lie to your friends. And then everything you thought you knew, as little as it was, was stripped away from you.'

Patterson's good at that, emphatic emphasis. Good at caring.

However, it wasn't deserved. 'By my actions...'

'You're not innocent. But you're a good person.'

'How do you know that?'

Patterson smiles. 'Because I'm a sucker for helping good people.'

'That makes _you_ the good person.'

'The tattoos helped people. You helped people. And for what it's worth, you are still my friend.'

'...Thank you.'

They sit there in silence; Patterson giving her the opportunity to steer the conversation for once. And if only she could talk about something normal, but she can't find a way through the swirling darkness in her head… the voice that keeps chastising her and playing her mistakes over and over again. She hasn't had a night where she hasn't dreamt of Kurt's face. Then sometimes it's Oscar. Or Mayfair. But all their eyes scream _you hurt me_.

'I've betrayed everyone,' she finally says, breaking the painful silence with more pain. 'Literally every side. People I don't even know. Just how did I manage to mess everything up so badly that I hurt _everyone?_ '

'...To hurt someone there has to be care first. You get involved because you think you're doing the right thing.'

'Not anymore. I can't do it anymore. You need to send me down. Lock me away. I can't sit in this room. I can't.'

 _Better yet, let me go and find the people who were responsible for this._ If only she could get a shot at justice, but nobody was on her side anymore.

'You think we're going to lock you up?'

 _She did think that._ She stiffens. 'What else would you do?'

Patterson looks towards the window again, as if asking the question to those on the other side… if anyone was there. But this time Jane doesn't look. She's finally realised it would be better if she did nothing, if she stayed out of her friends' business, that would be for greater good.

'I appreciate this, Patterson. I really do.'

Patterson looks back.

'I know you mean well. But, uh, please can you send someone I don't know next time? I dream of those hurt eyes, I can't face them in real life. Just send a stranger. Someone who hates me because of my profile and not because I stabbed them in the back.'

'Jane…'

'Thanks for the tea. I've always appreciated your help.'

And it's a goodbye. On her terms. Because she doesn't think she has the strength to say anything else to another ex-friend.

* * *

At first she had admitted the truth to Kurt, shared her memories, and lies. He thought she was a good person. Then the lies got harder to tell, deeper and darker. She stopped sharing the truth, but Weller kept believing in her.

He would have forgiven her. Maybe. If she was Taylor. If she was taken as a child and manipulated. If she wasn't the one who made these decisions, and maybe even then, because she was Taylor and he found her.

 _'It's really nice, to have you back,'_ he'd said.

He wanted her to be Taylor Shaw _so much_. She didn't know how to be the person he lost. That was her biggest worry, when things were at their most simple. She also had to earn his trust, but that happened very quickly, it was easy and natural. They were a good team.

When she sees him, she stands up. But her hands are still chained to the table in front of her.

He's still angry. He's still hurt. She's spent long enough looking into his eyes to recognise that immediately. She should have known how he would look at her, but it's a fresh emotional wound on an open sore and she just wants to make him happy again.

 _How he'd smiled and laughed when he spoke about her. Taylor._

She sits down and he sits opposite her.

She goes to speak, 'Is–'

'Fishing at the lake.'

He never liked her. He just liked the idea of her. That's why he cared about her, in that special way, he thought she was Taylor.

He told her she was brave, stupid but brave. He probably thought her a lot worse than stupid now. She can _feel_ the malice radiating from him.

'What other lies have you told me?'

'I tried not to–'

'Jane.'

It's a confession that comes to her mind first – she had felt guilty for not turning up to meet him, though he hadn't turned up either anyway...

'The night after we first kissed, the night we said we'd meet again... That was the first time I met Oscar. I wanted to meet you, but as far as I knew that was the only chance I had to find out who I was.'

'I turned up. I didn't bail on you. I turned up.'

It hurts more than thinking he hadn't. At least she could have been less guilty if that were the case. And she could use a little less guilt.

'I'm sorry–'

'Why Taylor Shaw?'

'To get to you. I guess. They used the tattoos because they wanted you in charge after Mayfair... They wanted me to get close to you.'

'That explains a few things.'

'I said no. They said they would kill you if I didn't. They gave me pictures, told me about the time we went fishing. I still wasn't going to use that. But when your dad asked if I couldn't remember him, I panicked, I wanted to help. I used the fishing memory. I just thought I couldn't remember it yet...'

'You made me forgive my father, and he _murdered Taylor. I let him be around Sawyer._ '

' _I thought I was Taylor._ I remember being in a camp of children. I thought I had been kidnapped. Kurt, please, I–'

'Have lied to me ever since you arrived.'

'No. I–'

'This discussion is over.'

He stands and he turns his back. It hurts more coming from him, and she hurt him the most. He can't even stand to be in the same room as her. He can't hold a conversation. He can't handle the truth. He won't give her the chance to try and make it right.

Tears are threatening to fall again, bitter and wet and apologetic. 'I don't blame you. I hate me too. I've hurt everyone, for nothing. I thought I was doing what was right. If anything, please believe that.'

If he believes her, even just a little, his back gives away nothing, and the slam of the door as he leaves may as well shout _No. Never._

* * *

It's a long while before they visit her once more. They kept her all this time for some reason, never quite allowing her peace. But they eventually come back to ask more of her again.

'We need your help.'

'What?'

'We've got a lot of unanswered questions. We need you to help solve them.'

She would do anything to help them, even if she was a bad person, she could try, at first...

'And Kurt?'

'Agreed.'

'OK. What now?'

'We need you to rejoin the team. Temporarily. This doesn't mean we trust you.'

She attempts a joke, but it's weighted with truth. 'I don't either.'

It turns out, they were only just beginning.

She would seize every opportunity to make things right.

* * *

 **Author Notes:**

This is a messy drabble that scratched my urge to play with confessions and reactions following the events of season one, and while I'm looking forward to season two I can't see myself writing anything further in this fandom.

This isn't a season two prediction – I think it's very unlikely to happen – Jane's not all that verbal with her emotions (it's not even easy for her to be that open). I expect the real thing to have a lot more drama and action! I also expect more defiance from Jane, especially if it's strangers she will face at the beginning, not friends.

Thank you for reading.


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